Robert Virding works for Erlang Solutions Ltd as a Principal Language Expert. While at Ericsson AB, Robert was one of the co-inventors of the Erlang programming language. As one of the original members of the Ericsson Computer Science Lab, he took part in the original system design and contributed much of the original libraries, as well as to the current compiler. While at the lab he also did a lot of work on the implementation of logic and functional languages and on garbage collection. He has also worked as an entrepreneur and was one of the co-founders of one of the first Erlang start-ups (Bluetail). Robert also worked a number of years at the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) Modelling and Simulations Group. He co-authored the first book (Prentice-Hall) on Erlang, and is regularly invited to teach and present at conferences and universities worldwide.

Everyone wants to talk about "conversational web services" nowadays, but the mental model of a conversation tends to be constrained by what our current web services frameworks are capable of delivering.

Erlang was designed for controlling real-time services of "conversational quality", meaning that the service should allow people to meet and converse with a "real-life" feeling, without disruptive delays and with a life-like presentation of information. Web frameworks in Erlang have largely copied the traditional MVC frameworks, but for the back-end logic, they have drawn on the full power of Erlang's distributed, real- time processing environment. In effect, Erlang frameworks have been constrained by the long-polling RESTful nature of today's web services, but can now start breaking out of that mold, with the advent of web sockets and other real-time delivery technologies for the web. This talk will illustrate how Erlang provides all the tools necessary for building the next generation of truly conversational web services.

Erlang Enhancement Proposal Panel Debate

Since the release of Erlang/OTP on GitHub the possibilities for the
Erlang community to contribute to the development of Erlang has
increased tremendously. We should leverage this possibility and the
increased interest in Erlang to keep Erlang as a living and growing
language by letting the community help the language evolve. In this
slot, Erik will present the EPP process and committee.

The
committee members present at the Erlang Factory will participate in a
panel discussion together with the audience discussing the most
important EEP proposals.

Target Audience: Software DevelopersPrerequisites: Good programming skills in another languageObjectives:• Understanding of the basics of Erlang.• Read/Write/Design Erlang Programs.• Good knowledge of the development environment and tools.• Provides basics needed to attend the Advanced Erlang/OTP courseGoal: Attend the Advanced Erlang/OTP course and eventually pass the Erlang certification exam.Duration: Three days.Registration: 08:30 on 6th June 2011.Venue: London Fruit & Wool ExchangeDescription:
The course contains all the Erlang basics such as sequential and
concurrent programming, along side error handling. The Erlang
development environment is presented, with a special emphasis on the
Erlang mode for Emacs alongside the major debugging tools. Good and bad
programming practices are discussed, as are tools used to profile the
system. OTP design principles and concepts are sneaked into the
material as well as the exercises.